Embodied shame : uncovering female shame in contemporary women's writings / J. Brooks Bouson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bouson, J. Brooks.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

Canadian literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

Canadian literature.

English literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English literature.

Women in literature.

Shame in literature.

Abused women in literature.

Psychic trauma in literature.

Body image in literature.

Self-perception in literature.

Body image in women.

Self-perception in women.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (239 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : SUNY Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"How does physical, emotional, and sexual abuse shape women's perceptions of their bodies and identities? How are women's psyches affected by the sexual, racial, and cultural denigration that occurs when women's bodies are represented as defective, spoiled, damaged, or dirtied? Embodied Shame skillfully explores these questions in the context of recent writings by North American women, contributing to work in shame theory and to feminist analyses of the intersections of theories of the body, affect, emotions, narrative, and trauma. By examining popular contemporary fictional - and nonfictional - texts, including Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory, and Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face, J. Brooks Bouson illuminates how deeply entrenched bodily shame continues to operate in contemporary culture, even as we celebrate the supposed freeing of the female body from the social and cultural constraints that have long bound it."--BOOK JACKET.

Contents:

The humiliations of the female flesh in Alice Munro's lives of girls and women

Family violence, incest, and white-trash shame in Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina

Racial self-loathing and the color complex in Toni Morrison's The Bluest eye and Marita Golden's Don't play in the sun

Sexual shame, family honor, and the mother-daughter relationship in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, eyes, memory

Coming of age in a culture of shame in Naomi Wolf's Promiscuities

Feeling fat, fearing fat in Jenefer Shute's life-size and Judith Moore's Fat girl: a true story

The culture of appearances and the socially invisible and unattractive woman in Anita Brookner's Look at me, Doris Lessing's The summer before the dark, and Fay Weldon's The life and loves of a she-devil

Gerontophobia and the cultural shaming of the elderly woman in May Sarton's As we are now and Margaret Laurence's The stone angel

Writing the disfigured and disabled body-self in Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a face and Nancy Mairs's Plaintext, Carnal acts, and Waist-high in the world.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438427393

1438427395

9781441622662

1441622667

OCLC:

436997213